Rants and Raves on Espresso

Tag Archive 'espresso_machines'

Today’s Seattle Times reported on how the exchange rate wreaked havoc on the American waiting list for the La Marzocco GS/3 — their first machine designed with home use in mind: Retail Report | Espresso-machine price leaves some steaming | Seattle Times Newspaper. For two years, La Marzocco promised a hefty $4,500 price tag for […]

Today’s New York Times published a brief article on Francis Ford Coppola’s personal obsession with espresso machines, of which he’s apparently owned some 300 to date: The Epic in a Demitasse Cup – New York Times. Of particular note is a machine that is “an early favorite, a large, silvery old-fashioned machine for the first […]

Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People – New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed […]

Although its approach is more from the caterer’s perspective, the Web site for the UK magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper published an article comparing the merits and tradeoffs off traditional versus automatic espresso machines: Coffee machines: traditional versus automatic. The article cites analysis where traditional machines used up 22% more coffee than their automatic counterparts. However, […]

This week, The Guardian (UK) posted an article on the elusive quality cappuccino: How’s your crapuccino? from Guardian Unlimited: Word of Mouth. While the Brits may disparage the “dirty dishwater” that is American coffee, even in London you’re helpless to find a cappuccino that isn’t served in a gargantuan bowl, filled mostly with milk, and […]

Last week, JL Hufford Coffee and Tea of Indiana announced a patent for a super-automated home espresso machine that would use artificial intelligence (i.e., pattern-learning technology) to anticipate the espresso beverage needs of its owner: Presenting the Coffee Machine That Reads Minds. Artificial intelligence technologies have long suffered a reputation for being “a solution in […]

In case you thought we were simply making things up for the benefit of a joke, coffee is truly getting worse at the same time it’s supposedly getting better. Today’s commercial flood of poorly designed home espresso machines marks some of these steps backwards. Other examples are more insidious, such as how the Nespresso machine […]

Contrast with the many home espresso machine design failures, Nestlé’s Nespresso pods and machines have been something of a consumer success story. The Nespresso machines do exhibit good design and an impressive amount of convenience. For a number of home espresso lovers, however, these advantages ultimately pale in comparison to their required use of stale, […]

In yesterday’s International Herald Tribune, design critic Alice Rawsthorn wrote about the increasing number of design failures in commercial products today: Why the overwhelming numbers of design flops? – International Herald Tribune [link updated]. What does she consider to be a design failure? Something that’s “not especially efficient or environmentally responsible” … “nor are they […]

Last month I mentioned an article on David Lebovitz’s site regarding his recent training at Illy‘s Università del caffè in Trieste, Italy. David is a professionally trained pastry chef and writer, and recently he’s taken up a bit of an obsession with quality home espresso production. (Sound familiar?) Today his site features an article and […]